The game plan was to fund with a commercial loan upfront, and reinvest all of the initial cash flow back into the property so that I could ultimately pull my capital out.

I bought my place after the last financial meltdown, so I have plenty of equity to cash flow my house as a rental and I thought about it last year, or an equity split with a friend to get him into being a home owner; but then you have to look at Cash on Equity instead of just cash on cash returns as I have heard David Greene talk about before (just looked it up to make sure and it is in his book http://biggerpockets.com/longdistancebook).I found a facebook video of David talking about the long distance thing, which you have probably heard on the podcasts (probably won't be able to post the link to fb: https://www.facebook.com/BiggerPockets/videos/newest-biggerpockets-author-david-greene-talking-long-distance-real-estate-inves/10155417628854833/)

Definitely swings the numbers a little bit, but the extra ~$500 / year for a SFH or duplex shouldn't change the game too much.

Along side that I'm wanting to get in to the buy and hold rental game in a few ~B- neighborhoods.I've never worked with a buying agent before, and they usually seem to be focused either on "homes" or "investments".

You have time to watch handyman videos and to paint, and time to build up savings for the next.  

What is the end game, what are we striving to? 

I backed into it and did not do the steps required to avoid big dollar losses.. if I knew then what I know now..I could be so far ahead of the game.

It's a mind game that is hard to beat with being so new.

I was actually planning on doing it via video conference, but in person would be cool too. 

He does have a few videos out there as well.